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Ramesses II
Ramesses II (also known as Ramesses the Great and alternatively transcribed as Ramses and Rameses ) was an Egyptian pharaoh of the Nineteenth dynasty. He is often regarded as Egypt´s greatest pharaoh. He was born ca. 1302 BC. At age fourteen, Ramses II was appointed Prince Regent by his father. He is believed to have taken the throne in his early 20s and to have ruled Egypt from 1279 BC to 1213 BCMichael Rice, Who's Who in Ancient Egypt, Routledge, 1999 for a total of 66 years and 2 months. He was once said to have lived to be 99 years old, but it is more likely that he died in his 90th or 92nd year. Ancient Greek writers such as Herodotus attributed his accomplishments to the semi-mythical Sesostris, and he is traditionally believed to have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus due to a tradition started by Eusebius of Caesarea. If he became king in 1279 BC as most Egyptologists today believe, he would have assumed the throne on May 31, 1279 BC based on his known accession date of III Shemu day 27.J. von Beckerath, Chronologie des Pharaonischen Ägypten, Mainz, (1997), pp.108 & 190Peter J. Brand, The Monuments of Seti I: Epigraphic, Historical and Art Historical Analysis, Brill, NV Leiden (2000), pp.302-305 Naming As with most pharaohs, Ramesses had a number of royal names. The two most important, his prenomen (regnal name) and nomen (birth name) are shown in Egyptian hieroglyphs above to the right. These names are transliterated as wsr-m3‘t-r‘–stp-n-r‘ r‘-ms-sw–mry-ỉ-mn, which is usually written as Usermaatra-setepenra Ramessu-meryamen. It translates as "Powerful one of Ma'at, the Justice of Ra is Powerful, chosen of Ra, Ra bore him, beloved of Amun". In the Hittite copy of the above-mentioned peace treaty with Hattusilis, the Pharaoh's name appears as Washmuaria Shatepnaria Riamashesha Maiamana. Some scholars believe this is possibly a closer approximation of the actual vocalization of the Egyptian king's name. Life between Hattusili III of Hatti and Ramesses II of Egypt, at the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.]] Ramesses II was the third king of the 19th dynasty, and the second son of Seti I and his Queen Tuya. Ramesses' older brother (perhaps Neb-en-khaset-neb) predeceased him before adulthood. The most memorable of Ramesses' wives was Nefertari. Earlier wives, among others, of this king were Isetnofret and MaathorneferureWolfram Grajetzki, Ancient Egyptian Queens, Golden House, 2005, Princess of Hatti. The writer Terence Gray stated in 1923 that Ramesses II had as many as 20 sons and 20 daughters but scholars today believe his offspring numbered almost a hundred in total. In 2004, Dodson and Hilton noted that the monumental evidence "seems to indicate that Ramesses II had around 100 children--with 48-50 sons and 40-53 daughters."Aidan Dodson & Dyan Hilton, The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson (2004), p.166 His children include Bintanath and Meritamen (princesses and their father's wives), Sethnakhte, Amun-her-khepeshef the king's first born son, Merneptah (who would eventually succeed him as Ramesses' 13th son), and Prince Khaemweset. Ramesses II's second born son, Ramesses B--sometimes called Ramesses Junior--became the crown prince from Year 25 to Year 50 of his father's reign after the death of Amen-her-khepesh.Dodson & Hilton, op. cit., p.173 In his Year 2, Ramesses II decisively defeated the Shardana or Sherden sea pirates who were wreaking havoc along Egypt's Mediterranean coast by attacking cargo-ladden vessels travelling the sea routes to Egypt.N. Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) pp.250-253 The Sherden people came from the coast of Ionia or south-west Turkey. Ramesses posted troops and ships at strategic points along the coast and patiently allowed the pirates to attack their prey before skillfully catching them by surprise in a sea battle and capturing them all in one fell swoop.Joyce Tyldesley, Ramesses: Egypt's Greatest Pharaoh, Viking/Penguin Books (2000), pp.53 Ramesses would soon incorporate these skilled mercenaries into his army where they were to play a pivotal role at the battle of Kadesh. As king, Ramesses II led several expeditions north into the lands east of the Mediterranean (the location of the modern Israel, Lebanon and Syria). Battle of Kadesh , at the Battle of Kadesh, in a relief inside his Abu Simbel temple.]] After some preparations, Ramesses decided to attack territory in the Levant which belonged to a more substantial enemy: the Hittite Empire. At the Second Battle of Kadesh in May 1274 BC towards the end of the Fourth year of his reign, Egyptian forces under his leadership marched through the coastal road through Canaan and south Syria through the Bekaa Valley and approached Kadesh from the south..Tyldesley, Ramesses, p.68 Ramesses planned to seize the citadel of Kadesh which belonged to king Muwatallis of the Hittite Empire. The battle almost turned into a disaster as Ramesses was initially tricked by two Bedouin spies in the pay of the Hittites to believe that Muwatallis and his massive army were still 120 miles north of Kadesh. Ramesses II only learned of the true nature of his dire predicament when a subsequent pair of Hittite spies were captured, beaten and forced to reveal the truth before him: Ramesses had fallen into a well-laid trap by Muwatallis whose thousands of infantry and chariotry were hidden well behind the eastern bank of the Orontes river under the command of the king's brother, Hattusili III. The Egyptian army itself had been divided into two main forces – the Re and Amun brigades with Ramesses and the Ptah and Seth brigades – separated from each other by forests and the far side of the Orontes river.Tyldesley, Ramesses, pp.70-73 The Re brigade was almost totally destroyed by the surprise initial Hittite chariot attack and Ramesses II had barely enough time to rally his own Amun brigade and secure reinforcements from the Ptah Army Brigade (who were just arriving upon the scene of battle) to turn the tide of battle against the Hittites. While Ramesses II had in theory 'won' the battle, Muwatallis had effectively won the war. Ramesses was compelled to retreat south with the Hittite commander Hattusili III relentlessly harrying the Egyptian forces through the Bekaa Valley; the Egyptian province of Upi was also captured according to the Hittite records at Boghazkoy. Tyldesley, Ramesses, p.73 Aftermath Egypt's sphere of influence was now restricted to Canaan while Syria fell into Hittite hands. Over the ensuing years, Rameses II would return to campaign against the Hittites and even achieved several spectacular victories (at a time of Hittite weakness due to a dispute over Muwatallis' succession) to briefly capture the cities of Tunip, where no Egyptian soldier had been seen since the time of Thutmose III almost 120 years previously and even Kadesh in his 8th and 9th Years.Grimal, op. cit., pp. 256f. However, neither power could decisively defeat the other in battle. Consequently, in the twenty-first year of his reign (1258 BC), Ramses decided to conclude an agreement with the new Hittite king at Kadesh, Hattusili III, to end the conflict. The ensuing document is the earliest known peace treaty in world history. Ramesses II also campaigned south of the first cataract into Nubia. He constructed many impressive monuments, including the renowned archeological complex of Abu Simbel, and the mortuary temple known as the Ramesseum. It is said that there are more statues of him in existence than of any other Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II (touregypt.net), not surprising as he was the second-longest-reigning Pharaoh of Egypt after Pepi II. A colossal statue of Ramesses II was reconstructed and erected on Ramses Square in Cairo in 1955. In August 2006, contractors moved the 3,200-year-old statue of him from Ramesess Square to save it from exhaust fumes that were causing the 83-ton statue to deteriorate.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5282414.stm The statue was originally taken from a temple in Memphis. The new site will be located near the future Grand Egyptian Museum. Mummy He was buried in the Valley of the Kings, in KV7, but his mummy was later moved to the mummy cache at Deir el-Bahri, where it was found in 1881. In 1885 it was placed in Cairo's Egyptian Museum, where it remains as of 2006. Ramesses' mummy features a hooked nose and strong jaw, and is of above average height for an ancient Egyptian, standing some five feet, seven inches.Tyldesley, Ramesses p. 14 In his last years, he suffered from arthritis, tooth cavities and poor circulation. Ramses II (thinkquest.org) His successor was ultimately to be his thirteenth son; Merneptah. In 1974, Cairo Museum Egyptologists noticed that the mummy's condition was rapidly deteriorating. They decided to fly Rameses II's mummy to Paris for examination. Ramses II was issued an Egyptian passport that listed his occupation as "King (deceased)." In Paris, Ramses' mummy was diagnosed and treated for a fungal infection. During the examination, scientific analysis revealed battle wounds and old fractures, as well as the pharaoh's arthritis and poor circulation. After Ramesses' mummy had been returned to Egypt, it was visited by the late President Anwar Sadat and his wife. Tomb KV5 In 1995, Professor Kent Weeks, head of the Theban Mapping Project rediscovered Tomb KV5. It has proven to be the largest tomb in the Valley of the Kings which originally contained the mummified remains of some of this king's estimated 52 sons. Approximately 150 corridors and tomb chambers have been located in this tomb as of 2006 and the tomb may contain as many as 200 corridors and chambers.http://www.narmer.pl/kv/kv05en.htm It is believed that at least 4 of Ramesses' sons including Meryatum, Sety, Amun-her-khepeshef (Ramesses' first born son) and "the King's Principal Son of His Body, the Generalissimo Ramesses, justified" (ie: deceased) were buried there from inscriptions, ostracas or canopic jars discovered in the tomb.Tyldesley, Ramesses, p.161-162 Joyce Tyldesley writes that thus far : "no intact burials have been discovered and there have been little substantial funeral debris: thousands of potsherds, faience shabti figures, beads, amulets, fragments of Canopic jars, of wooden coffins...but no intact sarcophagi, mummies or mummy cases, suggesting that much of the tomb may have been unused. Those burials which were made in KV5 were thoroughly looted in antiquity, leaving little or no remains."Tyldesley, Ramesses, p.161-162 Pharaoh of Exodus? At least as early as Eusebius of Caesarea, Ramesses II was identified with the pharaoh of whom the Biblical figure Moses demanded his people be released from slavery. This identification has been occasionally disputed but the evidence for another solution is inconclusive: * Ramesses II was not drowned in the Sea and the biblical account makes no specific claim that the pharaoh was with his army when they were "swept ... into the sea." In fact, Jewish tradition appears to indicate that Pharaoh was the only Egyptian to survive the Red Sea, and later became the King of Nineveh in the Book of Jonah.Exodus 14 * There is nothing in the archaeological records from the time of his reign to confirm the existence of the Plagues of Egypt. This is not surprising since few pharaohs wished to record natural disasters or military defeats (as documented in the Biblical narratives) in the same manner that their rivals documented these events. In addition, no reference to any setbacks were made in royal Egyptian textual records or within the large number of informal Egyptian texts still in existence. For instance, after the serious Egyptian setback at the Battle of Kadesh, Hittites archives uncovered in Boghazkoy, the capital of Hatti, reveal that "a humiliated Ramesses was forced to retreat from Kadesh in ignominious defeat" and abandon the border provinces of Amurru and Upi to the control of his Hittite rival without the benefit of a formal truce.Tyldesley, Ramesses, p.73 Benteshina, the ruler of Amurru who had been Ramesses' ally at Kadesh was deposed and swiftly marched off to Boghazkoy to face an uncertain fate while the Hittite hold over Kadesh was reinforced. By contrast, in Ramesses II's version of events, the Pharaoh fictitiously states--just a day after his narrow escape from death in battle--that "the cowardly Hittite king sent a letter to the Egyptian camp pleading for peace. Negotiators were summoned and a truce was agreed, although Ramesses, still claiming an Egyptian victory...refused to sign a formal treaty. Ramesses returned home to enjoy his personal triumph, which was to be retold many times in prose, as an epic poem and in relief carvings."Tyldesley, Ramesses, p.73 No inconvenient references to Ramesses' loss of Amurru or Upi are preserved in the Egyptian records. * The dates now ascribed to Ramesses's reign by most modern scholars might not match the dates when Moses was believed to be in Egypt. In the 1960's and 1970's, several scholars such as George MendenhallMendenhall, "The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine," Biblical Archaeologist (25, 1962) associated the Israelite's arrival in Palestine more closely with the Hapiru mentioned in the Amarna letters which date to the reign of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten and in the Hittite treaties with Ramesses II. Most scholars today, however, view the Hapiru instead as bandits who attacked the trade and royal caravans that travelled along the coastal roads of Canaan. On the other hand, Ramesses' own stele erected in the late 13th century BC in the city known to the Bible as Bet-Shan mentions two conquered peoples who came to "make obeisance to him" in his city of Rameses but mentions neither the building of the city nor, as some have written, the Israelites or Hapiru Stephen L. Caiger, "Archaeological Fact and Fancy," Biblical Archaeologist, (9', 1946).. The Bible states that the Israelites toiled in slavery and built "for Pharaoh supply cities, Pithom and 'Ra'amses" in the Egyptian Delta. Exodus 1:11 The latter is probably a reference to the city of Pi-Ramesse Aa-nakhtu or the "House of Ramesses, Great-of-Victories" (modern day Qantir) which had been Seti I's summer retreat.Tyldesley, Ramesses, p.82 Ramesses II greatly enlarged this city both as his principal northern capital and as an important forward base for his military campaigns into the Levant and his control over Canaan. According to Kenneth Kitchen, Pi-Ramesses was largely abandoned from c.1130 BC onwards; as was often the practice, later rulers removed much of the stone from the city to build the temples of their new capital: Tanis. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (2003), p.662. ISBN 0-8028-4960-1, Therefore, if the identification of the city is correct, it strengthens the case for identifying Ramesses II as the Pharaoh who reigned Egypt during Moses' lifetime. His son and successor Merneptah mentions in the so-called Merneptah Stele that the Ancient Israelites already lived in Canaan during his reign. Merneptah's reference to their destruction, according to Hasel, probably refers to the Egyptian military strategy of burning towns and their grain storehouses, instead of the destruction of the ethnic group which would either conflict with history or prove that Merneptah learned his propaganda tactics from his father. Merneptah's inscription uses parallel structures which contrast the Canaanite city-states with the Israelites. This prompts one to remember that the books of Joshua and Judges both paint pictures of the Israelites as tribes acting independently or in small coalitions against their enemies and wonder how fast they could have coalesced to the point where an ancient and mighty nation such as Egypt would consider them worth mentioning. Speculation that Ramesses II was the Biblical Pharaoh named Shishak who attacked Judah and seized war bounty from Jerusalem in Year 5 of Rehoboam is untenable because both Ramesses II and his 19th Dynasty successors (ie: Merneptah, Seti II, Siptah & Twosret) retained firm control over Canaan during their reigns. Neither Israel nor Judah could have existed as independent states during this time. Fiction *The life of Ramesses II has also inspired a large number of historical novels, including the five volume series, Ramsès, by the French writer Christian Jacq. (Translated editions are available for non-French readers.) *Norman Mailer's novel Ancient Evenings is largely concerned with the life of Ramesses II, though from the perspective of Egyptians living during the reign of Ramesses IX. *Ramesses was the main character in the Anne Rice book The Mummy or Ramses the Damned. *Ramesses was played by Yul Brynner in the classic film The Ten Commandments (1956). Here Ramesses was portrayed as a vengeful tyrant, ever scornful of his father's preference for Moses over "the son of his body". *In the film "The Prince of Egypt" Ramesses (voiced by Ralph Fiennes) is portrayed as Moses' adoptive brother. *The song "User-Maat-Re" by death metal band Nile is about Ramesses II. *Ramesses is the inspiration for Percy Bysshe Shelley's famous poem Ozymandias. *Ramesses was the inspiration for the character Ozymandias in the award-winning graphic novel Watchmen. See also *Abu Simbel *Battle of Kadesh *Ramesseum *Ozymandias *Nineteenth dynasty of Egypt Family Tree *List of Ramesses II's family members and state officials References Further reading * Hasel, Michael G. “Israel in the Merneptah Stela,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 296. (Nov., 1994), pp. 45-61. *James, T. G. H. 2000. Ramesses II. New York: Friedman/Fairfax Publishers. A large-format volume by the former Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum, filled with colour illustrations of buildings, art, etc. related to Ramesses II * Von Beckerath, Jürgen. 1997. Chronologie des Pharaonischen Ägypten, Mainz, Philipp von Zabern. *Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson. 1982. Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt. Monumenta Hannah Sheen Dedicata 2. Mississauga: Benben Publications. ISBN 0-85668-215-2. This is an English language treatment of the life of Ramesses II at a semi-popular level *Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson. 1996. Ramesside Inscriptions Translated and Annotated: Translations. Volume 2: Ramesses II; Royal Inscriptions. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-18427-9. Translations and (in the 1999 volume below) notes on all contemporary royal inscriptions naming the king. *Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson. 1999. Ramesside Inscriptions Translated and Annotated: Notes and Comments. Volume 2: Ramesses II; Royal Inscriptions. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers *Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson. 2003. On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ISBN 0-8028-4960-1. * Tyldesley, Joyce. 2000. Ramesses: Egypt's Greatest Pharaoh. London: Viking/Penguin Books Category:1302 BC births Category:1213 BC deaths Category:Pharaohs of the Nineteenth dynasty of Egypt Category:Mummies